The Secret
by Feefella
Summary: .:From Frostbite:. -D.POV- Dimitri tells Rose a secret to prove she is mature enough to handle adult things... then Tasha shows up. -Set between The Discussion and The Balcony-


**A/N: Okay, here it is... the LAST Frostbite fanfic! It is actually set between _The Discussion_ and _The Balcony._ It was requested by my "number one fan" RoseBelikov18, so I kind of HAD to do it. I am so happy to have finally finished it. It have been sitting there for a while waiting to be written but I was trying to read the WORST vampire series in the WORLD and it screwed my brain up and I couldn't write... Then I read the 7th Sookie Stackhouse book and I got my groove back!**

**Anywho... I am going to start on the re-read of Shadow Kiss. but in the meantime is there any other POV's you want a scene from? I will say right now that I will not do any Adrian POV's because there are some amazing 's around and I would feel like I was stepping on those author's toes...but if there is a character POV you want and a certain scene you want it from let me know!**

_**And also, the darling **Leftoverthoughts** who is my usual Beta is really super sick in the hospital. So please send good thoughts her way. I love having her as a beta and as a friend and I am actually very worried about her so please please PLEASE send those good thoughts along!**_

**P.S. Just a reminder, the covers for my fanfics are on my profile page sooooo check them out!**

**[Standard Disclaimers Apply]**

* * *

"Spokane_."_

"Spokane, _Washington_?"

Janine rolled her eyes at me. The action reminded me a bit of Rose. "Yes, Washington. A few guardians from there have found evidence to suggest that they were the same from the Drozdov attack. Witnesses claim to have seen Washington plates, further solidifying our belief that that's where they have made their nest."

"Who makes Spokane their hideout?" I asked, incredulous.

"Strigoi, apparently. Look, could you pay attention here?" She was getting irritated.

"Sorry."

Janine nodded and continued. "Reports of disappearances lead us to believe that they are operating around or living near this shopping center." Janine pointed to the computer screen "This location is top priority when we get the go ahead from the council." I nodded as her cell phone rang. "Excuse me," she said looking down at the phone. "I need to take this."

I got up and left the room trying to wrap my head around the conversation that had taken place in the last thirty minutes.

Strigoi were confirmed to be working with humans in the attacks on the Royal families. They were residing in _Spokane_ of all places. And they were hunting around a shopping center there. Whether it was to make more Strigoi or simply to feed we didn't know, but the point was that it was a great lead. The best we had considering how little we had to go on.

I was lost in thought, and almost didn't notice the open door to my left but I stopped when I heard Rose say, "We're not. I just want to know what's going on here."

"Me too." I said with an air of authority. Rose was standing just inside Adrian Ivashkov's suite. Lissa was further inside. I was a little surprised at how angry I got. I did _not_ like seeing Rose in another man's room… or Lissa. _You are angry that they are in a boy's room,_ I thought to myself.

I stepped in from the hallway, looking around the room. It looked innocent enough. No alcohol out in the open, no drugs either. However I didn't know what was in the box at Ivashkov's feet. I looked between the three of them waiting for an excuse or even the truth but they sat there in silence. Lissa and Rose looked guilty, the Moroi boy looked smug. _Typical,_ I thought. Moroi boys never seemed to give a damn what they did to young girls. This one certainly didn't.

"Male and female students aren't supposed to be in each other's rooms." I kept my tone level… or at least I hope I did.

"How do you keep doing this?" Rose said, not to me, but to Ivashkov.

"Do what?" He asked innocently.

"Keep making us look bad!"

"You guys are the ones who came here." _Smug bastard_.

"You shouldn't have let them in," I said trying to keep my temper in check. "I'm sure you now the rules at St. Vladimir's."

The boy shrugged. "Yeah, but I don't have to follow any school's stupid rules."

"Perhaps not," I said, fighting the urge to hit him. What was it about this particular Moroi that made me want to kick his teeth in? "But I would have thought you'd still respect those rules."

He actually rolled his eyes at me. Why was everyone rolling their eyes at me today? "I'm kind of surprised to find _you_ lecturing about underage girls."

I was going to hit him. I was going to break a few bones and I was going to enjoy it. But I didn't because Rose and Lissa where here, and it wasn't exactly right… but mostly because Rose and Lissa where here. My hands were balled into fists but I stood where I was, trying to calm myself down.

"Besides," he continued, clearly pleased with himself. "Nothing sordid was going on. We were just hanging out."

"If you want to 'hang out' with young girls, do it at one of the public areas." I was trying not to show my fury.

He laughed then taking all three of us by surprise. Rose and Lissa both looked sort of creeped out. "Young girls? _Young_ girls? Sure. Young and old at the same time. They've barely seen anything in life, yet they've already seen too much. One's marked with life, and one's marked with death… but _they're_ the ones you're worried about? Worry about yourself, dhampir. Worry about you, and worry about me. We're the ones who are young."

I couldn't speak. None of us could. We just stood there staring at him. I was now convinced this guy was completely insane. He looked at us a moment then turned and made his way to the window. He looked back briefly, reading out similar expressions of shock and uneasiness, and pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket.

"You ladies should probably go. He's right. I am a bad influence."

I turned an left the room, Rose and Lissa following close behind.

"That was… strange." Rose said from behind me.

"Very," I agreed, trying to wrap my head around what had just happened. One minute I had been ready to kick Adrian Ivashkov's ass, and the next I was wanting to leave as soon as possible. He was an unstable young man and I really didn't want Rose being around him at all.

We reached the lobby and she started to walk toward her room with Lissa. I don't know whether it was the fact that she had just been in some boy's room or the fact that I had just learned that the future of our world was shifting thanks to a new alliance bewteen humans and Strigoi, but I needed to talk to Rose.

"Rose," I said, causing her to turn around. "Can I talk to you?"

She watched Lissa walk away, then turned her attention to the Moroi walking past us. She seemed distracted and I felt myself growing impatient.

"That's Adrian Ivashkov," I said, not trying to hide my distaste.

"Yeah, I know." Her tone was challenging.

"This is the second time I've seen you with him." I was trying to convey through little words that she was being careless. She wasn't catching on as quickly as I had hoped.

"Yeah," she said, indifferently. "We hang out sometimes."

How often did she hang out with him? I had been avoiding her, but now I was starting to feel like I should have been paying more attention. I arched an eyebrow inquisitively and nodded toward the hallway we had just come from. "You hang out in his room a lot?"

She glared at me, no doubt thinking of a witty line. Then she said, "What happens between him and me is none of your business."

I wanted to cringe but held my ground. She had used the same words I had about mine and Tasha's relationship. She was trying to be witty, but she was just being childish.

"Actually, as long as you're at the Academy, what you do _is_ my business."

"Not in my personal life. You don't have any say in that."

"You're not an adult yet."

"I'm close enough. Besides, it's not like I'll magically become an adult on my eighteenth birthday."

"Clearly." _Shit_, I thought to myself. I had done it again. Insulting her age was not going to help the situation and I was only doing it to feel justified in my own actions with Tasha.

She blushed and looked slightly embarrassed. "That's not what I meant. I meant-"

"I know what you meant. And the technicalities don't matter right now. You're an Academy student." _Try not to sound jealous_, I told myself. "I'm your instructor. It's my job to help you and keep you safe."_ Good, talk safety._ "Being in the bedroom of someone like _him_… well, that's not safe." _And you lost it._

"I can handle Adrian Ivashkov," she muttered. "He's weird- really weird, apparently- but harmless." She studied me for awhile and I felt like she was looking through me. I didn't like that naked feeling that surfaced when she was discovering something new about me. Something told me that she knew I was jealous.

"Speaking of personal lives…" she said narrowing her eyes. "I suppose you were off visiting Tasha, huh?"

Not surprised that she was back to being petty I suppressed a sigh. "Actually, I was visiting your mother."

"You going to hook up with her too?" I wanted to roll my eyes now. I knew she didn't honestly think I would get involved with her mother, but she had to say it… because she was Rose Hathaway.

"No, we were looking over some new data about the Strigoi in the Drozdov attack."

Her attitude changed suddenly. She was no longer a petty teenager trying to one up someone who had hurt her feelings. "What'd you find out?"

"We've managed to track some of the Strigoi. Or at least the humans with them." As I said the words I found myself still unable to believe that Strigoi would team up with humans. But after the scene at the Badica's I doubted that much would surprise me ever again. "There were witnesses who lived nearby who spotted a few of the cars the group used. The plates were all from different states- the group appears to have split up, probably to make it harder for us. But one of the witnesses did catch one plate number. It's registered to an address in Spokane."

"Spokane?" Rose asked in disbelief. "Spokane, _Washington_? Who makes Spokane their hideout?" Her words were the same as mine had been earlier.

"Strigoi, apparently," I answered with no emotion. "The address was fake, but other evidence shows they really are there. There's a kind of shopping plaza that has some underground tunnels. There've been Strigoi sightings around that area." I thought back to the conversation I had just had with Janine and I knew what was coming. Rose was rather predictable when it came to some things.

"Then…" she said with a frown. "Are you going to go after them? Is somebody going to? I mean, this is what Tasha's been saying all along… If we know where they are…"

I shook my head and looked at her. "The guardians can't do anything without permission from higher up. That's not going to happen anytime soon."

"Because Moroi talk too much," she said with a sigh.

"They're just being cautious." No matter how much I disagreed with them I knew it wouldn't change, and there was no use complaining about things I couldn't change. Unfortunately, Rose did not share my feelings.

"Come _on_. Even you can't want to be careful on this one. You actually know where Strigoi are hiding out. Strigoi who massacred children. Don't you want to go after then when they don't expect it?" She was whining and I half expected her to stomp her foot. I wasn't going to admit that the same exact thoughts had been running through my head.

"It's not that easy," I said trying to stay logical. "We answer to the Guardian Council and the Moroi government. We can't just run off and act on impulse, And anyway, we don't know everything yet." I was repeating Janine's words and feeling like a complete hypocrite. "You should never walk into any situation with out knowing all the details."

"Zen life lessons again," she said with a sigh. I really hated that term. As she tucked her hair behind her ear she looked at me, inquisitively. "Why are you telling me this, anyway? This is guardian stuff. Not the kind of thing you let novices in on."

She stood there looking at me and I looked into her glorious brown eyes. I couldn't think of a single lie, standing here next to this woman so full of spirit; so ready to do the right thing. "I've said a few things… the other day and today… that I shouldn't have. Things that insulted your age. You're seventeen… but you're capable of handling and processing the same things as those much older than you do."

She seemed slightly shocked. "Really?"

I nodded, and after seeing a smug expression creeping into her eyes, I quickly said, "You're still really young in a lot of ways- and act young- but the only way to really change that is to treat you like an adult." Her smugness was dissolving. "I need to do that more. I know you'll take this information and understand how important it is and keep it to yourself."

"Dimka," came a voice from down the hall. Tasha made her way over to where Rose and I stood. She smiled at Rose when she saw her. "Hello, Rose."

"Hey." her tone was flat. I knew she didn't like Tasha and I was curious about what issue Rose was deluding herself into believing she had with the older woman. I doubted very much that she was admitting she was jealous, even though that was clearly the case. I however _knew_ the Adrian Ivashkov was a bad influence. He had a reputation and my disdain for him was legitimate.

As Tasha ran her hand over my arm I stole a glance at Rose. She was frowning and glaring at Tasha's hand. I was appalled that a small part of me enjoyed seeing her that way. What was wrong with me? Was I that far gone that causing someone else pain was now a form of enjoyment?

"You've got that look," Tasha said, tearing through my thoughts.

"What look?" I asked, attention on her. I didn't have a look, did I? Did Rose see the look?

"That look that says you're going to be on duty all day." _Oh _that_ look. Thank God._

"Really? I have a look like that?" I asked mockingly. It was easy to joke around with Tasha, there wasn't the same tension as there was with Rose. Who was still standing there watching our exchange.

Tasha nodded. "When does your shift technically end?"

I felt a little bad that I hadn't spent much time with her since I drove her to the mall in Missoula. "An hour ago."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the look on Rose's face. She looked as if she were watching a frog dissection; a disgusted look plastered on her face.

"You can't keep doing this," Tasha groaned. "You need a break."

"Well… if you consider that I'm always Lissa's guardian…"

"For now," she said in a knowing tone, and I repressed a guilty cringe. Rose seemed to stop breathing all together. "There's a big pool tournament going on upstairs," she continued not sensing any of the tension coming from me or Rose. Or maybe she had and was just ignoring it.

"I can't," I said with a smile. "Even though I haven't played in a long time…" I felt the tension raise even higher from Rose. I swear you could have cut it with a knife. There was no way that Tasha was not picking up on this.

"Come on, then," she said, begging. "Just one round! We could beat them all."

"I can't," I said, with some regret. I missed calm casual settings sometimes. "Not with everything going on."

"No. I suppose not." She looked at Rose then, finally acknowledging her presence for the first time since her casual "hello". "I hope you realize what a hard-core role model you have here. He's never off duty."

"Well," Rose said, slightly mockingly, "_for now_, at least."

Tasha looked slightly puzzled. She obviously didn't understand the fact that Rose was making fun of her. I did and I looked at Rose with a warning in my gaze. She was _not_ going to prove me wrong about wanting to treat her like an adult.

"We're finished here, Rose. Remember what I said." I didn't want to give her the chance to say anything else that we both might regret.

"Yeah," Rose grumbled turning away. "Definitely." And she stormed off down the hall.


End file.
